Despite having some of the highest levels of smartphone penetration in the world and despite the increase in multiscreen viewing, UK television viewers spend more time daily than any other country watching TV – an average of two and a half hours a day or 36% of their screen time – according to the AdReaction 2014 study, conducted by Millward Brown, the global brand, media and communications research agency. The report is the first study in the world to reveal the use, behaviour and receptivity to advertising of multiscreen users in 30 countries globally, including the UK.

The author of the report Martin Ash, research director at Millward Brown, spoke to the Media Network about the study and explained its significance to for the media industry.

Tell us about the AdReaction 2014 study and why it came about?

This report is design to understand consumers' motivations across different devices and understanding a bit more about the precise nature of second screen activity. We wanted to go behind the data stats and actually look at what was going on in the consumer's mind when they were shifting across devices.

If brands can understand these journeys and pick the right moment in these journeys when consumers are going to be most receptive to brand messages, that's how you unlock the multiscreen opportunity for your brand.

Q: What about practical advice within the report? What are the different types of opportunities you've found for brands in this research?

Multiscreen generally is an untapped opportunity at the moment, because brands simply don't have the understanding they need of how receptive consumers are going to be to advertising messages while they're 'shifting', 'meshing' or 'stacking' across screens. That was one of the key findings. What we found was that meshing offers probably the deepest opportunity for brand engagement.

Q: What is meshing? How can media owners capitalise on this trend?

Meshing is the use of more than one device or screen to access related content. There are some good examples of brands doing this around TV sponsorship. For example, if you have a high investment sponsorship of a live TV show, where there might be audience voting etc, very often that's supported by an app which is designed to increase viewer engagement with a TV programme.

If your sponsorship message comes across via TV and then via app, to an audience that are really engaged with the content, then that's a very seamless way for a brand to take advantage of multiscreen - particularly meshing.

The only thing about meshing is it's actually still quite a niche activity. Of all the multiscreen behaviour we see, only about 7% of multiscreen behaviour is actually meshing.

Q: How do you expect people to use a report like this? What are you hopes for the industry to respond to this research?

What we're trying to understand here are the different opportunities presented by different multiscreening behaviours.

If we look at stacking, which a lot of people talk about and is probably the thing that comes to most people's minds when they think about multiscreening, that's different screens operating at different times with unrelated content. It has almost become the modern equivalent of going to put the kettle on during the TV breaks.

We know through the survey that one of the main motivations for people stacking is to fill the void during the TV ad break. So if you're choosing at that point in time to hit that user with another ad, on a device they've turned to to avoid ads, that's probably not a great opportunity for brand engagement. On the other hand, the opportunity offered by meshing is greater because we know the user is engaged.

Shifting accounts for by far the biggest amount of multiscreen behaviour, which is when you start watching content on a particular device, but then continue to watch that same piece of content on a new device.

It offers a very real opportunity for sequential messaging or, seeing that we know through this study that most shifting journeys start from the TV, your messaging can start on the TV with a nice broad saliency message, then, through the other devices you can get a bit more targeted and more precise with that message to build on it.

Q: Beyond multiscreen what are the other trends that are important and need more debate?

Actually, it's the case for traditional press, magazines and print. When we talk about digital budgets and mobile budgets, we see the investment that's going into that space coming from print. The TV budget seems secure, particularly in the UK, but that isn't always following a great deal of logic. When you look at the analysis we run of multimedia campaigns, we typically see print punching above its weight in terms of brand impact. A lot of budget shifts that tend to be happening follow eyeballs rather than follow what we understand about true effectiveness.

I think there's a degree of hyperbole when it comes to digital media that isn't always validated against a thorough and robust media insight.

This content is brought to you in association with Millward Brown, sponsors of the Guardian's Changing Media Summit 2014.